The Escapist - Loading Times

August 14th, 2008, 01:24

Shamus Young takes an amusing look at Loading Times in games over at The Escapist, using The Witcher as his prime example. Here's the introductory paragraph:

Loading screens. Satan's immersion-breaking intermissions. Long enough to break the flow of gameplay, short enough that you can't just fire up the DS and play something else. It's a slice of time you're obliged to throw away, the gaming equivalent of sitting in traffic. You can't leave the computer but there's nothing to do. You sit slack-jawed and stare at the screen in anticipation of the computer getting back to the entertainment.

In Drakensang, there *are* loading screens, but they are so quick that they hardly annoyed me !

— “ Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius – and a lot of courage – to move in the opposite direction.“ (E.F.Schumacher, Economist, Source)

The Witcher did have some long loads (and autosaves, especially in houses as Arma said) but that's supposedly all been patched away. Longest loads I remember were in the original Baldur's Gate—not to mention having to listen to that voice saying "You must gather your party before venturing forth…" I only have one memory cell still functioning, but that little line looks like it will remain with me forever…

It's fun to imagine what this process must look like to the various characters you meet in the game. A legendary hero rolls into town, talks to a few people, and then begins wandering in and out of houses at random, blinking and looking confused like a mentally ill door-to-door violence salesman.

Originally Posted by GhanBuriGhan
People are pansies these days. Agony was loading up a game on a C64 with Datasette (tape drive) for half an hour only to have it crash, again and again, 5 minutes into the game…

I bought the "load-it" drive but even that failed to work at times - after loading entire cassette and half of another one. I never found any rpgs for tapedrive and hungered for games like pool of radiance but the c64 disk drive was insanely costly (and of poor quality too ive heard).

— “I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” - Maya Angelou
"Those who dont read history are destined to repeat it."– Edmund Burke

I have to admit, I'm very impatient with loading times these days. I used to be a lot more patient. Now I expect to pretty much have zero loading time as long as I'm running on a state of the art system, but every now and then that's not the case. Needless to say, I ended up being fairly frustrated when playing The Witcher (esp. in chapter 2, when running in and out of houses all the time). Many times I actually found myself thinking: "Do I really have to enter this house? Is there no way to avoid it?".

Try writing your own code in basic directly from a magazine before you have anything to play

I still remember with a certain fondness those wonderful sounds my Spectrum made when loading games. I used to be able to hear what game was loading and if it would load properly - just by listening to it.

That said, I've grown exceedingly impatient over the years, and I despise what I call unnecessary load times. The Witcher (pre-patch) was horrible, because it would load for every tiny building you entered - seemingly without re-using or caching textures or anything else. It DID improve significantly with the 1.2 patch (I think it was 1.2).

Try writing your own code in basic directly from a magazine before you have anything to play

Try writing it repeatetly everytime you play because you have no way to save it. Oh and dont make a single typo. I did write som code from mags but the practice didnt last that long. If only I had found a way to save the codes.

— “I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” - Maya Angelou
"Those who dont read history are destined to repeat it."– Edmund Burke

If we still speak about the Witcher, I wasn't that bothered up about the long loads (pre-patched, that is). It was quite annoying, but even if it was the smallest house that had no NPC inside and the loot is a few orens or a couple of food items. The good part was you could enter in all the houses (well, almost) and explore and could possibly find something of value like a book or eventually a gem. It was a fresh thing that I hadn't seen for quite a while in an RPG.

I admit the load times in the Witcher were pretty bad for me at first, but I didn't mind that much since the game was so enjoyable. I actually kept a book nearby to read while the game was loading. It worked quite well. I don't know what kind of moron would just stare dumbfoundedly at the loading screen like the article states, but perhaps they should take that time to learn to read.

Originally Posted by zakhal
Try writing it repeatetly everytime you play because you have no way to save it. Oh and dont make a single typo. I did write som code from mags but the practice didnt last that long. If only I had found a way to save the codes.